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All Subjects: Organic Chemistry
Creators: Arrington, Anastasia Sergeevna
Creators: Beerman, Eric Christopher
Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Status: Published

Intelligent Input Parser for Organic Chemistry Reagent Questions

Description

Due to its difficult nature, organic chemistry is receiving much research attention across the nation to develop more efficient and effective means to teach it. As part of that, Dr. Ian Gould at ASU is developing an online organic chemistry educational website that provides help to students, adapts to their responses, and collects data about their performance. This thesis creative project addresses the design and implementation of an input parser for organic chemistry reagent questions, to appear on his website. After students used the form to submit questions throughout the Spring 2013 semester in Dr. Gould's organic chemistry class, the data gathered from their usage was analyzed, and feedback was collected. The feedback obtained from students was positive, and suggested that the input parser accomplished the educational goals that it sought to meet.

ContributorsBeerman, Eric Christopher (Author) / Gould, Ian (Thesis director) / Wilkerson, Kelly (Committee member) / Mosca, Vince (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)

Created2013-05

Incorporating Sustainability Into Copolymer Design

Description

Polyolefins have dominated global polymer production for the past 60 years, revolutionizing fields of medicine, construction, travel, packaging, and many more. However, with steadily increasing polyolefin production each year and traditionally long polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene degradation times, estimated on the order of 500 years or more, a massive challenge arises with accumulating plastic waste. While the end-of-life of polyolefins previously manufactured must be addressed, incorporation of sustainability and circularity into future commodity plastic design at the molecular level offers an opportunity to decrease their negative effects on the environment going forward. Herein, several approaches are described which aim to address the need for polymeric materials while introducing a sustainable approach to their design, either through incorporation of biosynthesized polymers or degradable units. In the first project, polymer blends of two biodegradable polymers were studied, and compared to the same blends containing a graft copolymer compatibilizer comprised of the two homopolymer counterparts. The compatibilized blends were expected to have superior mechanical performance to the uncompatibilized blend and potentially offer industrially relevant benefits. While this was not achieved, valuable insight into the polymer blend interactions were gained. The idea of compatibilizing polymer blends was further explored with blends of PE and a cellulose derivative with the aid of a custom ABA triblock compatibilizing agent. It was discovered that the compatibilizer reinforced the polymer blend by providing mechanical strength at the cost of flexibility. To approach sustainability from a different perspective, several segmented copolymer series based on telechelic PE oligomers were then synthesized and analyzed. The segmented systems exhibited similar structure to high density PE (HDPE), retained similar mechanical and thermal properties to commercial HDPE, but contained degradable units throughout the polymer backbone. Several fundamental principles were explored through the segmented and chain-extended polyolefin architecture, including the influence of reactive linkage (amide vs. ester), random vs. alternating segment structure, and PE segment molecular weight. The effects of tailoring polymer structure on thermal, mechanical, and morphological properties are described herein. The relationships established from these experiments may further guide future polymer design and contribute toward more sustainable polyolefin manufacturing.

ContributorsArrington, Anastasia Sergeevna (Author) / Long, Timothy E. (Thesis advisor) / Jin, Kailong (Committee member) / Biegasiewicz, Kyle F. (Committee member) / Matson, John B. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)

Created2022

ARsome Chemistry: The Use of Augmented Reality Notecards to Improve the Comprehension of Molecule Structures in Chemistry

Description

Augmented Reality (AR) especially when used with mobile devices enables the creation of applications that can help students in chemistry learn anything from basic to more advanced concepts. In Chemistry specifically, the 3D representation of molecules and chemical structures is of vital importance to students and yet when printed in 2D as on textbooks and lecture notes it can be quite hard to understand those vital 3D concepts. ARsome Chemistry is an app that aims to utilize AR to display complex and simple molecules in 3D to actively teach students these concepts through quizzes and other features. The ARsome chemistry app uses image target recognition to allow students to hand-draw or print line angle structures or chemical formulas of molecules and then scan those targets to get 3D representation of molecules. Students can use their fingers and the touch screen to zoom, rotate, and highlight different portions of the molecule to gain a better understanding of the molecule's 3D structure. The ARsome chemistry app also features the ability to utilize image recognition to allow students to quiz themselves on drawing line-angle structures and show it to the camera for the app to check their work. The ARsome chemistry app is an accessible and cost-effective study aid platform for students for on demand, interactive, 3D representations of complex molecules.

ContributorsEvans, Brandon (Author) / LiKamWa, Robert (Thesis director) / Johnson, Mina (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)

Created2022-05